Austrian writer Peter Handke’s Nobel literature prize win on Thursday sparked outrage in Albania, Bosnia, and Kosovo, in which he is widely regarded as an admirer of overdue Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic.

From the 1990s, Handke appeared as a vocal defender of the Serbs through the bloody collapse of the former Yugoslavia, even comparing them to Jews under the Nazis, a comment he later retracted.

“Never believed would sense to vomit due to a Nobel Prize,” Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama composed on Twitter.

“Given disgraceful choice produced from a moral authority such as the Nobel Academy, pity is sealed as a fresh price. We can not become numb to racism and genocide.”

“It’s shameful that the Nobel Prize committee readily neglected that Handke was justifying and shielding Slobodan Milosevic and his executors (Bosnian Serb wartime leader) Radovan Karadzic and (his military leader ) Ratko Mladic sentenced by a UN court… for the most acute war crimes including genocide,” he explained in a statement.

By devoting Handke that the Academy’s Nobel committee has”entirely lost its moral compass”, Dzaferovic added.

Bosnian celebrity Nermin Tulic, that had been severely injured during the 1992-1995 siege of Sarajevo by Bosnian Serb forces, greeted the award by tweeting an emoticon of a smiley vomiting.

Liberal Sarajevo politician Reuf Bajrovic stated he couldn’t know a jury believed that”Handke is a superb writer and his service Slobo (Milosevic) and genocide makes a part of his job great”.

Emir Suljagic, a part of the massacre of over 8,000 Muslim men from Srebrenica from Serbs, declared him.

“A Milosevic enthusiast and infamous genocide-denier has Nobel prize in literature… What a time to be living,” Suljagic, a Sarajevo-based professor of international relations tweeted in English.

Buddy of Serbs

The response was comparable in Kosovo, which was ravaged from the 1998-1999 war between Serb forces and pro-independence ethnic Albanian guerillas.

In the 2006 funeral of Milosevic — who died while on trial for crimes against humanity, and that desired Handke to testify in his defense — that the author made a speech before tens of thousands of mourners.

Some stood around for Handke, such as Nobel-winning compatriot Elfriede Jelinek. But a lot of other people, from Susan Sontag to Salman Rushdie, lined to lambast him.

Serbia newspapers hailed the Nobel Prize was given to a”buddy of Serbs” that was part of the nation’s academy of arts and sciences because 2012.